Archives for August 2017

“The directories won’t last long – new technology will come along soon and wipe them away!”

From a meeting in 1999 with some of the hotshots of the legal sector at the time: partners at a Magic Circle law firm, a leading law firm communications expert, and a top legal consultant.

Almost 20 years on, the directories to which they referred – the research-led publications produced by the likes of Chambers & Partners, Legal 500, and Euromoney – are still here.

Like the people who say constantly that the stock market or house prices are about to crash, if you keep repeating the line that the directories are about to disappear, you hope that eventually it will happen so you can say you were right all along.

Of course, directory skeptics will say that it’s weak-willed lawyers with fragile egos and risk-averse law firms terrified of breaking from the pack that sustain this archaic industry.

But maybe the reason that such directories have survived the onslaught of the internet, the financial crisis, the new normal, the fourth industrial revolution, and every other paradigm shift, is that they’re doing something right.

There’s plenty of things that directories could do better, but, fundamentally, what’s the alternative?

There’s a principle called “Chesterton’s fence” which basically means ‘don’t take down the fence until you know why it was put up’.

In other words, don’t tear something down unless you have something better to replace it with.

There has always been a strain within the legal industry that is skeptical of traditional media, and overestimates the power of technology.

“Isn’t there an app that can produce a submission in two minutes?”

“Can’t IBM Watson rank lawyers better than a room full of researchers?”

I have heard variations of this kind of stuff every day for the last 15 years.

At times I’ve wondered myself how much longer the traditional quill-and-ink ethos of a company like Chambers can survive in this hyper new world.

The tech-will-destroy-everything crowd is currently in the ascendancy, energized by a daily diet of stories about how artificial intelligence and automation will lay waste to society, leading to a mass of serfs who will have to be content with a subsistence payment from an elite of tech overlords in fortified bunkers.

Technology has already changed the legal directories industry.

The original incarnation of Martindale-Hubbell – the leading legal directory for over a century – was a victim of the internet.

Avvo has blown away much of the competition in the US consumer space, with a potent combination of qualitative (customer reviews) and quantitative (a proprietary ratings algorithm).

League tables like MergerMarket, Dealogic, Thomson Reuters, and Bloomberg have successfully moved into the data space in the last 20 years to provide a quantitative complement to the qualitative directories – using numerical data instead of research interviews.

Even the old-fashioned research-led directories have evolved, albeit slowly, and ecosystems have sprung up in which firms have designed databases to capture internal matter information or manage the client reference process.

Then on the horizon you have the likes of the Meisterline Index, developed by former antitrust lawyer Peter McMillan, which uses cognitive science to measure the expertise of legal specialists.

“Premonition uses natural language processing to extract information from public court documents to find out which lawyers won or lost a case for their clients.

The latest data analysis focused on the High Courts of England & Wales, from family to patents, examining over 11,000 cases between 2014 and 2016.”

Interestingly, Herbert Smith Freehills and Allen & Overy – London litigation heavyweights – feature highly in the Premonition rankings, but Clifford Chance, which is ranked by Chambers in the highest category for disputes, does not make the Premonition top 10.

While I take my hat off to Premonition for having a go at utilizing technology in this way (plenty of others are good at talking, but not doing), what computers can’t do – yet – is assess how trustworthy a lawyer is, how conscientious they area, how well they know a company’s business, how they exercise judgment, how they draw on years of experience to know if and when to settle a case, and a myriad of other “soft” factors that come together to determine whether a firm is hired or retained.

And while Premonition’s win/loss data may be effective for high-end disputes in the London commercial courts, how do you rate the effectiveness of say, a bankruptcy legal advisor?

Whether a company filed for formal bankruptcy protection?

Or didn’t file?

Did they liquidate?

Or restructure out of court?

How many cents on the dollar the creditors got paid?

And ditto in numerous other areas of law with complex moving parts – tax, securities enforcement, derivatives, white-collar – where often it‘s what you don’t do that is the measure of success as much as what you do.

Making predictions is a mug’s game in such febrile times, but I can’t see a quantitative system entirely replacing the likes of an in-depth survey conducted by a team of intelligent researchers and journalists with knowledge of a particular area of law.

I expect the directories of the future will combine elements of both objective (fact-based, measurable) and subjective (opinions, interpretations, points of view) research.

If the two can co-exist on one platform, now that would be a powerful tool.

The new editor of Legal 500’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa guide, Jonathan Armstrong, had some good advice for law firms over on LinkedIn this week:
“Don’t’ try to cram as many partners as possible into a phone call or meeting.”

Mass conference calls are the bane of directory researcher’s lives.

Nine out of 10 researchers will tell you privately that the best interviews are those when it’s one-on-one – them speaking to one partner.

Two partners on a call can work – if they are cochairs, or they complement each other as they represent different parts of the practice (say one partner does patent, the other trademark, for the intellectual property section).

But more than two partners is rarely desirable.

A friend at one of the directories told me about a situation in which they were asked by a large, well known law firm to interview eight partners for a single section on one call.

The researcher politely pushed back, explaining, naturally, that such an arrangement would be impractical and unwieldy, and unfair to other firms, some of whom wouldn’t be interviewed at all.

An escalating series of calls and emails followed, in which ultimately our man in the law firm marketing department begged the directory researcher to allow the eight-person call to proceed as he had over-promised internally.

“I will be fired if you don’t allow this call to happen!” he pleaded.

So you end up with an unsatisfying compromise, but which keeps a lid on things politically by allowing multiple partners to “be on the call”

The same thing can happen with in-person interviews.

A researcher turns up to an office expecting to interview partner x, but is then shown to a room with 10 partners lined up in a row.

99% of the best directory interviews are where you have one partner – usually the head of the practice or a senior partner well placed to talk about the team and the broader market – talking directly to an interviewer.

They are in a room on their own, with the door shut, talking into the handset (not on speakerphone), concentrating on the call in hand.

They’ve blocked out an hour, they’re not juggling other calls, the secretary outside doesn’t allow anyone to interrupt or enter the partner’s office.

The partner has done some preparation – they know who they’re speaking to, from which publication, they have a copy of the submission printed out in front of them, and they have a copy of the latest rankings (because they know they will be asked about these).

The partner can talk freely and comfortably.

He can promote the practice, as he should, but he can also be honest about recent developments – the firm might have lost a key partner or had some setbacks in court.

She can talk candidly about what’s going on in the rest of the market – which other firms she’s seen on the other side of deals, what she honestly thinks of the rankings.

Partners loosen up when it’s just them on a call.

The researcher can develop a rapport with them, and get some great insights into the market.

From the researcher’s perspective, that’s the goal of a directory interview – to come away having genuinely learnt more about the practice and the market, over and above what you can read in the submission.

The dynamic changes, though, when several people are in the room.

Partners don’t say as many interesting things.

Lawyers are cautious people and they become mindful of what others in the room are thinking.

People are dialing in and out, there’s beeps and tones, you don’t know who’s on the call and who isn’t.

As an interviewer, you try to keep everyone involved but it’s hard to get any flow.

It’s all very stilted.

While a great interview with your law firm partner will not necessarily result in a higher ranking, it will lodge in the researcher’s mind and leave a good impression.

A new online legal directory has been launched that allows users to rate US judges.

To use Gaveling, you first select a US state, and then choose either a judge by name or by a court.

Gaveling allows users to rate judges on four criteria:

If the judge is on time or not

If the judge is strict or lenient

If the judge is plaintiff-friendly, defendant-friendly or neutral

An “overall” score

You can also leave comments and “feedback” for judges.

Attorneys, witnesses, parties, and laypersons can remark on the characteristics of a judge, such as whether the judge appears to be ethical, whether the judge can listen and communicate, the judge’s impartiality, and the judge’s ability to manage a caseload.

According to the creator of the site:

“Gaveling creates a new much-needed level of transparency in the court system. This new level of transparency helps parties, witnesses, attorneys, and voters recognize which judges are good and which ones are not. It gives a voice to those who were previously voiceless and promotes the spread of information and judicial accountability.

Gaveling also provides invaluable information to attorneys. Knowing whether a judge tends to favor one side over the other, or tends to pressure parties into settling, or is always over an hour late to the bench can help attorneys advise their clients and present their cases appropriately.”

The site is currently available via website, but a mobile app is in the works.

A buyer of legal services who has got as far as a legal directory has probably already got a few names on a shortlist – the lawyer/firm they used last time for something similar, referrals from existing lawyers (if it’s not their area), recommendations from other companies in the same situation.

Often they’ve done some internal work already before consulting a legal directory – they’re not coming into the buying decision “blind”.

The role of the directory may then be crucial, because it will confirm to the potential buyer what he had instinctively thought – “let’s go with firm/lawyer X”.

Or it will tip the scales in favor of one firm/lawyer over another – “there were two firms/lawyers on my shortlist, but one of them has got a glowing write-up, while I can’t see the other, so I’ll go with her”.

Or it may open their eyes to a new firm/lawyer that had not previously come up in the initial discussions of potential options.

In all these instances, as Gallagher says, they are ready to act.

They’ve gathered up information, done some research, checked out websites, spoken to people, put a shortlist together, and now they want to move forward.

The Legal Marketing Association has ended three long-running awards programs that celebrate achievement within the legal marketing industry.

LMA, a membership group and trade association for the legal marketing community, has decided to call time on the “Your Honor Awards”, “Rising Star Awards” and “Hall of Fame”.

Familiar to attendees of the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, where the winners are announced, the Your Honor Awards recognize excellence in legal marketing across multiple categories.

The Rising Star Award recognizes professionals who are 35 or younger or who have less than 10 years of overall work experience.

The Hall of Fame celebrates individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the legal marketing industry over a long time period.

The LMA said in a statement that its decision to end these programs is part of a broader effort to refocus the organization on external and educational initiatives.

Some LMA regions – the LMA has several regional chapters throughout the US – will continue to offer their own awards programs.

Unsurprisingly, the LMA’s decision has divided the legal marketing community.

One group welcomed the LMA’s move, as they felt that these awards programs were inward looking and self-serving, when the job of a legal marketer is to promote their lawyers’ achievements, not their own.

On the other hand, many feel that the job of a legal marketer can be thankless and a membership organization like the LMA should spotlight the achievements of its members.

There is an irony here in that a section of the LMA crowd has been one of the most vocal critics of lawyer directories and awards over the years, but is nevertheless keen to keep its own recognitions program – “lawyers aren’t allowed to have egos, but we are”.

That said, the LMA’s decision seems odd to me for several reasons:

Awards and recognitions are a big part of what law firm marketers do for their law firm clients, so they understand the importance of third-party recognition in profile raising.

Awards and recognitions are growing – not just in legal, but across industry more broadly.

Many law firm marketers found this program a helpful benchmark as to what is “best in class” in other firms – useful if you’re in a smaller firm, or seeking some ammunition to persuade your own firm to embrace new initiatives.

All groups of workers need some kind of program to recognize their achievements – it’s human nature to want to appreciate others’ achievements, and to be appreciated yourself.

And it’s not like there’s much competition – there aren’t many organizations or publications that showcase legal marketing achievements.

Heather Morse, the marketing director at California law firm, Greenberg Glusker, and one of the more outspoken critics of the LMA’s decision, told me yesterday:

“Like many LMA members, I was taken aback by the recent decision of the board to “sunset” three of our award and recognition programs. By ridding ourselves of the Hall of Fame, Your Honor Awards, and Rising star, we are ceding control of what is excellence within our profession.

You cannot go to school to become a legal marketer. The training is all on the job. LMA and the leaders, many of whom now make up the Hall of Fame, were my mentors and guides. And now, almost twenty years later, here I am. I don’t understand this decision, and I will use my voice to make it right.”